Review: ASUS ROG Strix GL702ZC – Ryzen-based laptop
The ASUS ROG Strix GL702ZC is one of the first AMD Ryzen based laptop – and not just any ordinary laptop, it’s a gaming laptop to boot. The catch: The CPU isn’t a mobile-variant Ryzen, instead it’s a meant-for-desktop Ryzen 7 1700. I was definitely curious as to how it performed. It’s been years since AMD had been able to compete head to head with Intel, and even more so from the laptop perspective.
Desktop Replacement
First and foremost, the ROG Strix GL702ZC is meant to be more of a desktop replacement. 17″ laptops aren’t just meant to be lugged around. On that note, it’s equipped with a 17.3″ matte Full HD IPS display with FreeSync support. It weighs a rather heavy 3.2 kg and a thickness of 35 mm. Other reasons why it’s a desktop replacement: (1) The battery life is honestly good for only about a couple of hours; and (2) you wouldn’t want to bring along the huge 1.2 kg charging brick.
Befitting its size, the GL702ZC does come with an array of ports – there’s both mini DisplayPort and HDMI for displays, three standard USB 3 Type-A ports and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. There’s also a 3.5mm jack and a card reader slot.
Design
Typical of ROG laptops, red lighting is consistently used – from the keyboard backlights to the lighted logos and design on the laptop lid. The lights can be dimmed but that’s as much as it is in terms of customisation. In fact, the ROG Strix GL702ZC is definitely not adventurous compared to the other ROG laptop range.
The cooling system is strong enough to ensure that temperatures stay at a decent operating range, and the ROG Gaming Center would come in handy to help you see your system parameters but the noise levels might be something to take note of. Even when just browsing the web, I can hear the fans spinning louder, and the RPM really ramps up when gaming. Well, ASUS has included a gaming headset in the package which will help mask out the noise. But if you are not using the headphones, the onboard speakers will provide decent oomph.
Free Gifts
Singapore buyers will be entitled to the following included accessories. McAfee, Gaming Mouse, Headset and Gaming Bag. Pictures of the equipment below.
Performance
- AMD RYZEN 7 1700 3.2 GHz Max Turbo 3.6 GHz Hexa Core Processor
- 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD+256GB SSD
- 17.3″ Full HD Display (1920 x 1080) Resolution
- AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB Dedicated Graphics
- Windows 10 Home
The GL702ZC pairs the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 processor with the Radeon RX580 graphics card. With eight cores and 16 threads, the Ryzen 1700 CPU features a maximum turbo speed of 3.7GHz. Passmark CPU performance ranks it at the 95th percentile, and similar to the Intel Core i7 7700. Memory performance was subpar, likely due to only single channel RAM being used – but it does make upgrading the RAM rather easy.
Performance for the AMD-based chipset and graphics card still loses out to the more common Intel / Nvidia combo. The RX580 is similar in performance to the Nvidia 1060 series. Games are still not designed to leverage on extra CPU threads – which is where the AMD Ryzen excels.
The 17.3″ display comes with FreeSync which synchronizes the monitor’s display rate with the refresh rate of the graphics card to eliminate screen tearing.
Perhaps consider this, if besides gaming, you do video encoding, or even streaming on twitch, the GL702ZC additional cores, threads will come in handy. The future might also be more promising as games would start to design with better multi-threading support (although this discussion seems to have been going on for years).
Verdict
Although marketed as a gaming laptop, the Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC doesn’t exactly perform that well for games – although it should be able to handle anything that’s currently on the market at Full HD resolution. On the other hand, this laptop is ideal for those who require highest multi-threaded CPU performance, thanks to the onboard Ryzen. However, portability (or the lack thereof) would have to be an important consideration when purchasing this laptop.